Days of the week
In English the days of the week are, in order, * , , , , , , . The English names for the days of the week derive from the stemming from the indigenous of the . An exception to this is Saturday, which takes its name from the deity . To varying extents, most regions with dominant practice a similar naming convention, basing most of their week days in recognition of their native . Saturday and Sunday are commonly called the weekend and are days of rest and in most western cultures. The other five days are then known as weekdays. Friday and Saturday are the days of rest in and cultures, respectively. The lasts from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. In many countries, including most of Europe, Asia, and South America, Monday is held to be the first day of the week. The traditional view, still prevailing in the English language, holds Sunday to be the first day of the week. This comes from the original definition of the week, and traveled through and the . The international standard defines Monday as the first day of the week, making Sunday the seventh. Origins of the week Various sources point to the seven day week originating in ancient or , with the planetary week originating in . It has been suggested that a seven day week might be much older, deriving from early human observation that there are seven celestial objects (the five visible planets plus the Sun and the Moon) which move in the night sky relative to the fixed stars.The Nine Planets: Planetary Linguistics: Days of the Week In any event, a seven day week based on heavenly luminaries eventually diffused both East and West, to the Romans via the Greeks, and to the Japanese via , Indians and Chinese. The earliest known reference in Chinese writings is attributed to , who lived in the late , while diffusions via India are documented with the writings of the Chinese Buddhist monk and the Ceylonese or Central Asian Buddhist monk of the 8th century. The Chinese transliteration of the planetary system was soon brought to Japan by the Japanese monk ; surviving diaries of the Japanese statesman show the seven day system in use in Japan as early as 1007. In Japan, the seven day system was kept in use (for astrological purposes) until its promotion to a full-fledged (Western-style) calendrical basis during the era. The seven day week is known to have been unbroken for almost two millennia via the Alexandrian, Julian, and Gregorian calendars. The date of Easter Sunday can be traced back through numerous computistic tables to an Ethiopic copy of an early Alexandrian table beginning with the Easter of 311 as described by Otto Neugebauer in Ethiopic astronomy and computus. Only one Roman date with an associated day of the week exists from the first century and it agrees with the modern sequence, if properly interpreted (see below). Jewish dates with a day of the week do not survive from this early period. Order The week as we know it was introduced around the . It gradually replaced the 8-day Roman nundinal cycle previously in use, and became fully integrated into the calendar (through ) by order of in AD . The order of the days was explained by and (and gave the same explanation in his ). According to these authors, it was a principle of astrology that the heavenly bodies presided, in succession, over the hours of the day. The asserts that the order of the heavenly bodies, from the farthest to the closest to the Earth, is: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. (This order was first established by the Greek Stoics.) If the first hour of a day is dominated by Saturn ( ), then the second hour is dominated by Jupiter ( ), the third by Mars ( ), and so on, so that the sequence of planets repeats every seven hours. Therefore, the twenty-fifth hour, which is the first hour of the following day, is dominated by the Sun; the forty-ninth hour, which is the first hour of the next day, by the Moon. Thus, if a day is labelled by the planet which dominates its first hour, then Saturn's day is followed by the Sun's day, which is followed by the Moon's day, and so forth, as shown below. According to Vettius Valens, the first hour of the day began at sunset, which follows Greek and Babylonian convention. He also states that the light and dark halves of the day were presided over by the heavenly bodies of the first hour of each half. This is confirmed by a Pompeian graffito which calls , a Sunday, even though by modern reckoning it is a Wednesday. Thus this graffito used the daylight naming convention of Valens whereas the nighttime naming convention of Valens agrees with the modern astrological reckoning, which names the day after the ruler of the first daylight hour. These two overlapping weeks continued to be used by Alexandrian Christians during the fourth century, but the days in both were simply numbered 1-7. Although names of gods were not used, the week beginning on Wednesday was named in ton theon (day of the gods), as used by the late fourth-century editor of the Easter letters of , and in a table of Easter dates for 311–369 that survives in an Ethiopic copy. These overlapping weeks are still used in the Ethiopic computus. Each of the days of the week beginning on Sunday is called a "Day of John" whereas each of the days of the week beginning on Wednesday is called a "tentyon", a simple transcription of the Greek ton theon. The same order can be derived "geometrically" from an acute heptagram, the {7/3} star polygon (as 24 mod 7 = 3). The luminaries are arranged in the same Ptolemaic/Stoic order around the points of the heptagram. Tracing the unicursal line from one planet to the next gives the order of the weekdays. Aleister Crowley (notwithstanding his mistaken use of the term hex''agram) in ''The Book of Thoth (1944) (Pt. 1, Ch. 1) states that: :It is believed that this neat discovery is due to the late G. H. Frater D.D.C.F. According to some sources, however, the weekday heptagram is considerably older: :It was with the adoption and widespread use of the seven-day week throughout the Hellenistic world of mixed cultures that this heptagram was created. Symbol 29:16 First day of the week According to the Bible, God created the Earth in six days, and rested on the seventh day, the Jewish Sabbath, i.e. Saturday. This made Sunday the first day of the week, while Saturdays were reserved for celebration and rest. After the week was adopted in Early Christian Europe, Sunday remained the first day of the week, but also gradually displaced Saturday as the day of celebration and rest, being considered the Lord's Day. In some places Sunday thus came to be viewed as the last day of the week. The variation is evident from names of the days in some languages — in Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Church Latin and Portuguese, some days are simply called by their number starting from Sunday, e.g. Monday is called "second day" etc. In other languages, like , days are also called after their ordinal numbers, but starting from Monday, making Tuesday the "second day". Names :For personal names taken from the days of the week, see Akan names. Germanic languages In English all the days of the week are named after the ruling luminary, with most of the names coming from deities, such as ( ) and ( ). Sunday and Monday are named directly from the Sun and Moon. Saturday is the only day named directly after a , though the Germanic god associated with each day is generally a of the corresponding divinity from the Roman calendar. Other generally follow the same pattern, but Dutch is the only other that preserves all the astronomical names. Icelandic is notably divergent, maintaining only the Sun and Moon (sunnudagur and mánudagur respectively), while dispensing with the names of the explicitly heathen gods in favor of a combination of numbered days and days whose names are linked to pious or domestic routine (föstudagur, "Fasting Day" and laugardagur, "Washing Day"). Romance languages In most s, such as , , and , the names of the days except Saturday and Sunday come from Roman gods via Latin. , the closest living language to that of , faithfully preserves all the Latin names, even though the language itself is not directly descended from Latin. The Roman (Latin) names of the days are still used in some English courts such as the House of Lords.United Kingdom House of Lords Decisions. Christianization The early Church was uncomfortable using names based on gods, and introduced a simple numerical nomenclature which persists in some an languages such as and , although in the numbering starts on Monday rather than Sunday (anticipating ). The Christian names are derived from , which numbers all days of the week beginning with "first day" for Sunday but ending with the "Sabbath" for Saturday. names are also derived from Hebrew, except Friday (the day of prayer) is named the "gathering day". Japanese & Korean In and , Sunday and Monday are named after the Sun and Moon, while the other five days are translated using the names of the five classical planets, which themselves are named using the of traditional Chinese philosophy (in a different order). For example, Mercury is called "planet of water" in Japanese and Korean, and Wednesday (Mercury's day in the Romance languages) is called "day of water". These names of days of the week were borrowed from Chinese, but are no longer used in China. These names were not widely used in daily Japanese or Korean life until being adopted during the Korean period as corresponding to the Western terms. Chinese In modern , days of the week are numbered from one to six, except Sunday. Literally, the Chinese term of Sunday means "the sun day" or "the heaven day" (星期日 or 星期天 in Chinese). Monday is named literally "the first day of the week" in Chinese, Tuesday is the "second", and so on. Despite this form of naming, many Chinese-speaking regions (e.g. , , etc.), still regard Sunday as the start of the week, putting Sunday at the beginning of the calendar week, and Saturday (星期六, meaning "the sixth day of the week" in Chinese) at the end. Another Chinese numbering system, found more in spoken Chinese than in written, refers to Sunday as the "day of worship" (礼拜日 or 礼拜天) and numbers the other days "first after worship" (Monday) through "sixth after worship" (Saturday). The Chinese word used for "worship" is associated with Christian and Muslim worship, and the system's use may be connected with the spread of Christianity. Etymology Remnants of the Germanic deities remain in the English language names for days of the week, as (more or less) calques of the Roman names: *Sunday: The name Sunday comes from the Old English sunnandæg, meaning "day of the Sun". This is a translation of the Latin phrase dies solis. English, like most of the Germanic languages and several of the Celtic languages, preserves the original pagan/sun associations of the day (an exception being Irish and the languages that come from it, Scottish and Manx); many other European languages, including all of the Romance languages, have changed the name of the day to the equivalent of "the Lord's day" (based on Ecclesiastical Latin dies Dominica). Compare Spanish domingo. *Monday: The name Monday comes from the Old English Mōnandæg, meaning "day of the Moon". This is likely based off of a translation of the Latin name dies Lunae (cf. Romance language versions of the name, e.g., French lundi, Spanish, lunes) *Tuesday: Tuesday comes from the Old English Tiwesdæg, meaning "Tyr's day." Tyr (in Old English, Tiw, Tew or Tiu) is a Germanic deity in Germanic paganism. The name is based on Latin dies Martis, "Day of Mars" (the Roman war god); compare French mardi and Spanish martes. *Wednesday: This name comes from the Old English Wodnesdæg meaning the day of the Germanic god Woden ( ), more commonly known as , who was the highest god in Norse mythology, and a prominent god of the Anglo-Saxons (and other places) in England until about the seventh century. It is based on Latin dies Mercurii, "Day of "; compare French mercredi and Spanish miércoles. The connection between Mercury and Odin is more strained than the other connections. The usual explanation is that both Odin and Mercury were considered s, or leaders of souls, in their respective mythologies. Also, in Old Norse myth, Odin, like Mercury, is associated with poetic and musical inspiration. *Thursday: The name Thursday comes from the Old English Þunresdæg, meaning the day of Þunor, commonly known in Modern English as , the Germanic god of . It is based on the Latin dies Iovis, "Day of Jupiter"; compare French jeudi and Spanish jueves. In the Roman pantheon, was the chief god, who seized and maintained his power on the basis of his thunderbolt (fulmen). *Friday: The name Friday comes from the Old English frigedæg, meaning the day of Frige, the Germanic goddess of beauty, who is a later incarnation of the Norse goddess , but also potentially connected to the Goddess . It is based on the Latin dies Veneris, "Day of "; compare French vendredi and Spanish viernes. Venus was the Roman god of beauty, love and sex. *Saturday: Saturday is the only day of the week to retain its Roman origin in English, named after the Roman god Saturn associated with the Titan Cronos, father of Zeus and many Olympians. In Latin it was dies Saturni, "Day of Saturn"; compare French samedi and Spanish sábado, which comes from sambata dies (day of the Sabbath). What is different is that the gods in question (except Saturn) do not appear to rule over the planets involved. However, as shown above, they correspond to some extent to Roman gods that rule over the respective planets. Tables :The (suggested) purpose of these tables is to show how far different languages preserve the associations with the ruling luminaries (or not!) and the Church's numbering of the days. (That is, '''not' to list the names in "every" language: Wiktionary entries for the day names offer such lists – click on the links in the header row.)'' Astronomical Numerical Notes #In Ecclesiastical Latin, the Romance languages, Greek, and the Gaelic languages, Sunday is named after the "Lord", because it is the day of the Resurrection of Jesus. #The Romance languages, Old High German and German, and the Slavic languages have words for Saturday that are derived from the Hebrew Sabbath, via late Greek Sambaton. German also has a second, Christianised name meaning "Eve of Sunday" (parallel to "Christmas Eve", for example). An alternative to the standard Samstag in northern dialects of German is Sonnabend ("Sun-evening"). #German and Finnish call Wednesday, prosaically, "mid-week"; Estonian kesknädal is equivalent, with "third day" (kolmapäev) also used; Icelandic uses "mid-week day"; Polish, Russian, etc. have "middle". #Old Norse, Swedish (and other North Germanic languages), and Finnish and Estonian (Finnic languages) call Saturday "washday" or "bathday", as it was the traditional day for washing and bathing. #The Japanese names are the same as the traditional way days of week were named in Chinese. The Korean names are also the same but written in Hangul. #Icelandic sunnudagur and mánudagur are astronomical, persisting presumably because they make no explicit reference to pagan gods. #See Lithuanian calendar. See also * Calculating the day of the week * Week References * Falk, Michael (1999). "Astronomical Names for the Days of the Week", Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 93:122-133. * Neugebauer, Otto (1979). Ethiopic astronomy and computus, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische klasse, sitzungsberichte, 347 (Vienna) * Days of the Week in Chinese, Japanese & Vietnamese External links *Planetary Linguistics and the Days of the Week -- The Definitive Site *Days of the week and months of the year in many different languages *Names of Weekdays at TheScian.com Science Wiki *Days of the Week in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese (much history of Western systems too) *The Days of the Week Category:Units of time * Category:Astrology Category:History of astronomy